User Services/Sync

The new home of all things related to the design & development of the New Sync service that is slated to replace the existing Sync service in late 2013/early 2014. A working name for this project has been PiCL ("Profile in the Cloud"), and the below documents may use this acronym.

What Problems Are We Solving?

Right now we have four problems with our existing Sync service. In priority order they are:

1. Usability: First, it's too hard to set up - only 1% of our users have actually done so. Second, it's too hard to add a second device - only 20% of sync users have more than one device (and hence are actually getting any value at all from sync).

2. Quality: The existing Sync codebase and protocol are unable to adequately address the reliability, performance, fault recovery, and efficiency requirements of a high-usage sync system.

4. Features: Features we want to build require that we can access data via web apps, which the current sync product cannot support. Competing browsers are building interesting features that can do this. We are at a disadvantage, and it's not for want of ideas.